Creideiki

Though some may deride me for mixing and matching mods. But here's something I've built in 0.20.2 (yeah, still haven't updated); based on the cancelled USAF Manned Orbiting Laboratory plans. Although, the picture is captioned "Soviet Gemini" (as a very roundabout reference to the USAF's Blue Gemini project, which is not the same as the MOL). Also please excuse the lack of screen cap quality; my laptop is le crap and if I turn up the graphics quality of KSP it will promptly catch fire. It's made with Kosmos -- of course, why else would I post it here? -- and the FASA Gemini and Mercury pack.

There's two programmable flight computer plugins out there at present, SimplySimon's ProgCom and zengei's Ketchup: DCPU-16. However, they are nothing like the computers on the Apollo spacecraft. Now, if you wanted to be more correctly realistic, there is a simulator of the Apollo Guidance Computer (and LM Abort Guidance System); the software also has the nice function that you only need implement the interface in whatever you want, and then TCP/IP over to the actual simulated CPU(s). A "full" simulation of the Apollo spacecraft would have two AGC CPUs, one running the COLOSSUS CM program, the other running the LUMINARY LM program, and an AGS CPU running the LM abort software. Or you could take the AGC and AGS simulator code and implement it directly as a plugin in KSP. But that would require more work.

There is one way to optimize the parts without having to change the models. Though some people will dislike the change. Namely, replacing the .MBM textures (which are uncompressed bitmaps) with .PNG textures. Before anyone brings up the fact that .PNG textures take forever to load in Unity... What's more important? More free RAM (and thereby, faster and less laggy spacecraft), or faster loading times? There's also compressed .TGA format but that is lesser quality than a PNG or MBM; though it does load faster than a PNG. BUT that is a task that requires one to replace all the textures. Which is a bit of a PITA. But then again the question becomes: What's more important, RAM or loading time?

Snjo's Firespitter DLL lets you have multiple animations per part. bac9's B9 Aerospace and sumghai's FusTek Station Parts Expansion use the Firespitter DLL (or a repackaged version of such) to drive multiple animations per part. Perhaps that could help make the twin Balka solar wings save their state? Cannot wait for more engines. Also, have you thought of making versions of the Soyuz and Progress craft for your pack? BobCat's Soyuz are excellent. But they clash visually with the Kosmos stuff. One last query, any chance of getting a temporary IVA for the station parts? I.e. so one needn't rely on Crew Manifest to see if their are any Kerbals on a station when it comes time to deorbit it at end of life. (Can you tell I'm still in 0.20.2 land?) EDIT: One thing I forgot to mention. The APAS docking ports are still not compatible with MechJeb. Which is somewhat annoying.

If you're still interested in ideas for displays. I've an idea for a "fun" one. Apollo style FDAI (English: navball). I.e. you have a navball - but it doesn't display prograde/retrograde vectors or manoeuvre nodes, just orientation. With a "proper" set of flight director bars above it; i.e. when rolled, pitched, or yawed in the right direction for the manoeuvre node the bars are centred, when you aren't, they aren't. My description is bad so have a Wikipedia link to its article on flight directors. The only other way to make it distinct from the navball is to have it have multiple modes of navball orientation: Stellar Orientation - Navball orientation is always fixed with position to the various stars in the universe (ignoring the lack of actual stars); which means the zero reference is what you find on the pad at KSC and never changes no matter where you are in the universe. ORDEAL Orientation - The name is actually referring to a system which rotated the Apollo's FDAI navball at orbital rate; basically this mode equals how the navball normally works (down is always pointing towards the gravitational centre of the body being orbited). Manoeuvre Orientation - The zero reference (zero heading, zero inclination) is your manoeuvre node; if you're not pointing at that, you're not pointing at your manoeuvre node. You'd probably want to find better names for all of the modes though. A much better description of the Apollo FDAI (also explaining the rate indicators which I glossed over) can be found at the article on the FDAI on the NASSP Add-On wiki for Orbiter. Right here. Cheers, and I absolutely LOVE the gauges.

You'll probably dislike this but... Would it be possible to reposition the EVA hatch on the node module to one of the side ports? If only so the Mk. III node gets balanced; which is the only one that really *needs* to be balanced. Since if you have a node at the centre of an otherwise balanced setup of station components... Whee uneven rotation. (Unless you stack two station nodes, back to front.) Just a wild idea. Also, I love the station parts so much.

I don't know if any one has mentioned it yet, but has any one translated the flags yet? If not; here are some translations: Flag 1: 12 ÃÂÿрõûь 1961 - 12 April 1961 Òþ øüѠÃœøрð ø ßрþóрõÑÂÑÂу - In the Name of Peace and Progress It commemorates Yuri Gagarin's historic Vostok 1 flight. Flag 2: áûðòð Þтчø÷ýõ Óõрþõò! - Glory to Heroes of the Fatherland! ...Well, that's suitably Communist. Flag 3: áþòõтÑÂúþüу ÃÂðрþôу - Soviet People ßøþýõру ÚþÑÂüþÑÂð - Space Pioneers áûðòð! - Glory! ...Nothing to say there, really.

I love the look of the Kirs module. Though I must ask, will you ever implement a stepped design of airlock/docking adapter/thing as your original Kuest mockup? I ask, as it's a lovely design. Also, may I inquire as to why the CoM of the Karmony Node isn't centred? Is it due to the whole avoiding explosion on Kerbal EVA fix? I ask as it took me forever to get my station core balanced in terms of RCS. On the other hand the entire exercise did provide me a good place to mount the quantum strut core. So my monolithic station core didn't go all wibbly wobbly atop it's giant launcher rocket.

While there are some places where I'm not quite that good at (attachment node positioning), I can write configurations for the various parts. So, if you want, I can assist in that task. SLBMs? Much fun can be had with them, though they aren't the best as satellite launch vehicles (and you don't get the most out of them unless you can launch from underwater). Though the Polaris is a multistage missile, so it wouldn't really be a good SRB, but it would probably make a nice sounding rocket, or extremely light satellite launcher. Presuming, of course the Polaris can get an object to orbital velocity not just a long-range suborbital trajectory. Well, if you want the flash, go talk with the person in charge of the Orion drive mod. (Which is a propulsion method that cam be described as "drop a nuke behind you and detonate it, repeat ad infinitum.") He's got his mod working so that each nuke detonation provides a flash. Actual blast effects would be far, far more work then anyone would be willing to realistically work on; while it would be easy enough -- I presume -- to put in simple mushroom cloud graphical effects, the actual effects of the (thermonuclear) boom would require lots more work, and probably lag out most any computer.

No, I am not good at texturing, or 3D modelling. I have a vision impairment so endeavours which require precision visual acuity are not my forté. I'm more a programmer and a musician.

Yes, the Galaxy is a far more iconic ship; I also quite like it, but I find I like the TOS designs more. (I also quite love the Excelsior-class, which is a lovely design.) Yes, I just fixed that, as Jack Wolfe mentioned below (the post of yours I'm responding to, and in my response to him, which is further below in this) Masao doesn't let people hotlink his site, so I just replaced it with an Imgur link. So yeah, problem solved. I don't know if you are still open to ideas; but if you are interested, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke had some absolutely lovely spacecraft designs in 2001: A Space Odyssey; specifically the Orion series spaceplanes (and flyback booster), the Aries series moon shuttles, and the tiny little "Moon Bus". Here's a photo of the things (taken from the "World of 2001" add-on for Orbiter). There's also the Discovery as well, but you can create an effective clone of it using parts already here on the forums. Ah, now that I did not know. Any way, replaced the original link to a copy of that pic on my (newly registered) Imgur.

Well, since you did such an excellent job on the Enterprise ("No bloody A, B, C, or D (or E)!" to paraphrase Scotty), how about some of the 'semi-canon' TOS starships? That is to say, the ones in the good old "Star Fleet Technical Manual". Most specifically, the Saladin-/Hermes-class, Ptolemy-class (and perhaps some of the Ptolemy cargo modules?), and the ever "epic" Federation-class, and the pre-TOS but still TOS-like (and quite canon) Daedalus-class. If you want more ideas -- for TOS era Star Trek ships -- there's the Mark VII shuttle, the conjectured TOS-style Miranda-class, and Space Station K7. Can you tell I like classic, original series Star Trek?1 If you want even more ideas, there's Masao Okazaki's "Starfleet Museum" ships. That is to say, these ships: I hope that picture isn't too big; I have no idea how to resize it. JJ Abrams can go burn in a fire, along with his execrable reboot.

Well, I do tend to write long treatises on subjects that interest me. Plus there's the fact I had been drawing up plans for an ICBM pack of my own but was pre-empted by this thread. Also, there's the fact I can't 3D model worth <redacted>, so it's not like I could make my own pack.

Umm, what may I ask is the R-36S? I've never heard of that version. The only R-36 versions I've seen are the R-36, R-36M, and derivatives of the R-36M (like the R-36M2, R-36MUTTh, et cetera). And, among all of those only one is actually solid fuelled; the Minuteman III of course. The R-36 is most definitely a liquid fuelled rocket (so is the Titan II). Here's a quite impressive photo of the R-36 lifting off: The plume of red "smoke" pouring out of the upper end of the missile is some of the nitrogen tetroxide (NTO) oxidizer in the fueling lines pouring out of the now severed umbilicals. You usually see a similar plume -- plus condensation plumes -- on liquid oxygen (LOX) fuelled rockets; like the Titan and Atlas series. Of course both the R-36 and Titan series are bi-propellant rockets; in that they need a second substance to actually combust. A rocket with NTO as the oxidizer will, most often have some form of hydrazine as its actual fuel; the R-36 using unsymmetrical dimethyl-hydrazine (UDMH); a rocket with LOX (example, the Titan series, Atlas series, or the Saturn rockets that took US astronauts to the moon), will usually have kerosene (US rockets using a type called "Rocket Propellent 1" (RP-1)) for the lower stages, and for space based stages will use liquid hydrogen (LH2) as it's more powerful. Of course the Titan II ICBM usually only LOX and RP-1. (Less "stuff" to have to deal with in the silo fuelling equipment. Since the missile silo already has to deal with the LOX and RP-1 propellents, and Helium as well as LN2 for the pneumatics and hydraulics on the missile systems.) LOX and NTO aren't the only oxidizers out there. There's red-fuming nitric acid (RFNA), inhibited red-fuming nitric acid (IRFNA), white-fuming nitric acid (WFNA), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), and as one last example chlorine triflouride (CTF). That last one deserves special mention. Let me quote the excellent John Clark from his quite good book Ignition! (which is all about liquid rocket fuels): Which of course means it is the most Kerbal of oxidizers. Of course we're getting way, way off topic of ICBMs. Though, I do have to question your selection of ICBMs to make. Two models of the R-36 (one of which doesn't exist)? That seems a bit redundant. If I were competent enough to model anything, and get it into KSP, I'd probably go with: American Missiles SM-68A Titan I/LGM-25C Titan II1 SM-65F Atlas F LGM-30G Minuteman III LGM-118A 'Peacekeeper' Soviet Missiles R-7/R-7A 'Semyorka'2 R-36M 'SS-18 Satan' RT-2PM 'Topol' UR-100N 'SS-19 Stiletto' So, let's give an explanation as to why those specific ICBMs were chosen. The Titan I and Titan II were selected, for two reasons. The Titan I was the first silo based, and first "proper" multiple stage missile. The Titan II's claim to fame was being the first American ICBM to use storeable rocket propellents (that is, the missile can sit in its silo with its fuel tanks full without having anything bad happening to it, or its fuel), which was NTO and Aerozine 50 (a mix of fifty percent pure hydrazine and fifty percent pure UDMH); the Titan II in a slightly modified civilian variant was used as a launch vehicle during NASA's Gemini program. The Atlas F ICBM is picked for two reasons; number one is the fact the Atlas family of ICBMs (and space launch vehicles) was the first American ICBM, period. The second reason is that the Atlas F was the last ICBM version of the Atlas family; it and the slightly different Atlas E got converted into rather useful satellite launch vehicles (though not specifically used with the Atlas E/F launch vehicles, the RM-81 Agena and Centaur upper stages being most notable). There's also a third reason, that being the fact the Atlas rockets (all of them up to and including the Atlas II launch vehicle) had a very interesting "stage and a half" design; where the outer two booster engines would be jettisoned leaving the main engine (and two vernier engines) as well as the fuel tankage remaining. Atlas III and beyond got rid of that design. The Minuteman III was chosen as it is the only land based ICBM currently in use by the US. It's predecessors the LGM-30 Minuteman I was the first solid fuelled missile to enter service in the US, as well as the first missile to have an onboard computer guidance system (as opposed to the simpler guidance systems on the Atlas F and Titan II, or the effectively non-existent guidance system on the Titan I). The Minuteman III also had an interesting addition compared to the earlier Minuteman versions, in that it has a pseudo-fourth stage; the part of the missile that holds the actual "boom" has a tiny liquid fuelled motor to adjust its course, and; for MIRV based goodness, help deliver each MIRV to the right place; the other three stages are all solid fuelled (with liquid fuel injected into the nozzles of some of the stages to steer them better); though the first stage actually does have a four nozzle engine, which I am surprised about. The LGM-118A Peacekeeper (also known as MX) was picked because it was simply the biggest ICBM in the US arsenal. It's also in the photo at the start of this thread. There's nothing else I could say about it. Now, in terms of the Russian ICBM's... The R-7/R-7A were picked becuase of two reasons, firstly they were the first Russian ICBM ever (and first ICBM in the world), secondly the a modified version of this ICBM was used for several of the early Russian space launches (most famously Sputnik, and Vostok 1 which made Yuri Gagarin the first human in space). The R-36M was picked as it was a counterpart of, and the reason for the development of, the LGM-118 Peacekeeper, being the largest ICBM in the Russian arsenal. The RT2-PM Topol was picked as it is the most deployed missile by the Russians; it was also the first road mobile ICBM deployed by the Soviets as well. It's solid fuelled too. (It also inspired the US to develop the Midgetman (not a typo) road mobile missile, which promptly got cancelled at the end of the Cold War.) The UR-100N was picked as it is the most modern Russian silo launched missile; it is liquid fuelled like the other ICBMs fielded by Russia/the Soviet Union. If anything else would be added I would suggest the RM-81 Agena and Centaur upper stages. Since they would make the American Atlas into its more common space launch vehicle design, as compared to the "bare" Atlas F. The Centaur and Agena were also used on the Titan II base (with or without strap on solid fuel boosters) as the Titan III. (There was a dedicated Titan III core, but we'll ignore that. Just as we'll ignore the fact that the Atlas-Agena and Atlas-Centaur were usually atop Atlas D derived lower stages with Atlas F avionics.) I could describe, in detail, what I think would be a good "breakdown" of the various parts for the mod pack; but I'm quite sure you wouldn't be interested (plus it is your mod, not mine). It's a good model; but it most assuredly is not even close to what the real Aerojet LR87 looked like. Though, add two more nozzles and in place of the "square" tubing, and you'll have the first stage solid rocket motor of the Minuteman. The Aerojet LR87 being the actual rocket motor used on the Titan series of ICBMs and rockets. The original LR87 being the main engine of the Titan I; the LR87-7 if I remember correctly being the main engine of the Titan II. A photograph of the actual LR87 can be found here. I do apologize for the sheer length of this reply; but I happen to find ICBMs to be a rather interesting topic. And I would love to see a representation of some of the more interesting strategic rockets of the world represented in KSP. Plus, most of the rather interesting ICBMs also happened to be used as very good space launch platforms. Making them much more useful then just "speedy delivery of boom."3 Footnotes The Titan I and Titan II both use the same lower stage, the difference between he two missiles being the Titan II's upper stage was larger. The R-7 and R-7A are nearly the same, the difference being the shape of the warhead re-entry vehicle and connecting cowling, and a fully enclosing cowling around the R-7A's booster motors. I am ignoring, of course the fact that the Titan I, R-7, and Atlas missiles all took a rather long time to prepare for, and then actually launch. The Titan I taking fifteen minutes (!) to fuel, and then raise into launch position; and to send off all three Titan I missiles in a Titan I launch complex required one to fuel each missile and then fire them one at a time (because the Titan I had to be controlled by ground-based radio navigation systems).

I have looked at the link, actually. My troubles are mostly in two fields: 1. I'm vision impaired, so 3D modelling and texturing is not my forté. (I'm a good musician and computer programmer; horrible at visual arts though...) 2. Unity confuses me. Quite honestly; I'm much more comfortable in working with my PDP-11/73 and PAL-11 assembler then C#. Any way, we are straying from the topic at hand. I'd show my work on the AVCO Mk 4 R/V of the Atlas F and Titan I; but that would make one's eyes bleed.

Based on your requested engine model (which, by the way, there is an excellent four combustion chamber/nozzel rngine in KW Rocketry), might I assume you are working on the Russian/Soviet R-R and R-36M? (NATO reporting names of the SS-6 Sapwood and SS-18 Satan, respectively.) Though, why you want SRM effects is beyond me, as both were liquid fuelled (R-7 by LOX and kerosene, R-36M by nitrogen tetroxide and UDMH). That engine surely can't be for an American missile, as the most combustion chambers on a rocket motor was the two on the bottom of the Titan I and Titan II. What ICBMs are you making anyways If you take suggestions, I suggest making the iconic Titan, Atlas and Minuteman missiles. Titan I and Titan II are quite similar (the main difference exists in the second stage), whereas the different Atlas ICBM models (i.e. Atlas D, Atlas E and Atlas F) are pretty much identical, but exceptionally cool. Minuteman is... somewhat generic. I myself have been working on making a model of the warhead re-entry vehicle for the Titan and Atlas family missiles, though I can't texture it worth anything, and don't even mention getting it into KSP. Anyway, cheers and looking forward to the results of this mod!